Marcus's classic case

While foot-and-mouth disease continues to divide hearts and minds within the racing industry, it's difficult to think about anything else.

But, with the new turf Flat season dawning tomorrow, having the ante-post 2,000 Guineas and Derby favourite in your yard tends to concentrate the mind.

This year, that enviable millstone is the lot of Marcus Tregoning. An energetic blend of youth and experience, the 41-year-old trainer has been dealt mixed blessings before and learned to accentuate the positive.

For 14 years, he was the hands and legs of world-renowned trainer Major Dick Hern after a hunting accident left him partially paralysed in 1984. When he succeeded Hern in 1998 as Sheikh Hamdan Al Maktoum's resident trainer at Lambourn's Kingwood House stables, he inherited both the heavy weight of precedent and the raw materials with which to match it.

Three years on, we find him emerging from the shadow cast by his predecessor's achievements. Last season was perhaps his final rite of passage, ultimately triumphant in a year seemingly wrecked before the summer was high. In 2001, three-year-old colt Nayef possesses all the strange symmetry required to usher in a new era.

He is both neat conclusion and rousing beginning, this Nayef. He carries it gracefully. In the bitter late winter this week, he glowed like a good horse does on the Tregoning gallops. Sheikh Hamdan had them built 10 years ago for an incoming Hern. The Major had been sacked as the Queen's trainer, but in 1989, his last year at the royal base of West Ilsley, Berkshire, he signed off by training new patron Sheikh Hamdan's Nashwan - the only horse to win the 2,000 Guineas, Derby, Eclipse and King George in the same season.

More than a decade on, these gallops nurture Nashwan's half-brother Nayef. Along with fellow half-brother Unfuwain, now a stallion of developing note, they share a mother in Height Of Fashion, whose sale by the Queen to Sheikh Hamdan in 1982 for around £1million has repeatedly given the vendor's racing estate cause for regret. It is in the steps of Hern and Nashwan that Tregoning and Nayef now aim to follow.

"Nayef doesn't have as extravagant an action as Nashwan, but they're similar in the amount of ground their stride covers. When they're cantering, you hardly know they're doing it," said Tregoning, delighting in his star's conditioning work behind classy stablemate, Albarahin.

It was exactly two years ago that Tregoning first laid eyes on Nayef. Of all the yearlings Sheikh Hamdan was sending him in 1999, this was the colt whose family history he held most dear. He wasn't disappointed when taking his first peek over that stable door in Dubai. Born relatively late in the year for a racehorse, on 1 May, Nayef was always going to have an autumn campaign in his juvenile year. As things turned out in 2000, that was just as well.

Despite Sheikh Mohammed's global operation, Godolphin, neglecting to pick Sheikh Hamdan's Ekraar from Tregoning's yard in 1999, great things were still expected of him the following year. But a stubborn virus hit the yard, affecting Ekraar harder than most, and Tregoning was forced to shut down his operation for six weeks.

"I had no choice - it was the only chance we had," admitted Tregoning. "Your young horses are seed corn for the following year and, if you keep pushing on with them when they're not right, you risk ruining two seasons, not just one. I was lucky in having owners who are horsemen and understand that. Given the start we had, I couldn't have been more happy with how the season turned out."

The denouement saw triple success for Ekraar, a Group Two victory for two-year-old filly Sayedah in Newmarket's Rockfel Stakes and an unbeaten campaign for the brilliant Nayef, who was accorded the highest-ever rating for a juvenile unversed in Group company by the International Classifications. Timeform went further, handing Nayef top billing and stating: "There is no better Classic prospect."

Once again the pressure is on. But where others see stress, Tregoning sees only pleasure. A 21st-century trainer, he swears by the relatively old-fashioned method of conditioning training and benefits from the vast experience of many of Hern's former staff, yet he is no old-style guv'nor. He may chivalrously open doors, but he also picks up the broom himself if the yard needs a sweep.

He is confident enough in his own powers to heed advice from experts - he admired Hern without being overawed and soaked up the knowledge of his associations with Sir Gordon Richards, Jakie Astor, Lord Weinstock, Lester Piggott and Willie Carson. This even extends to his contemporaries - conferring with John Gosden on all-weather training surfaces, and openly admiring the achievements of Richard Hannon and Mick Channon.

Everything comes naturally - even ambition.

"I actually find these situations quite relaxing," said Tregoning, surveying the coming season. "I tend to think: 'God, at least we've got Nayef, rather than not.' Quite what it will be like a few days before the 2,000 Guineas, I don't know. It's wonderful to have a chance, but I want to train Classic winners - not just the one. I'd like to keep going."